No Agent Zero tonight

The Washington Wizards will take on the Cleveland Cavaliers tonight at Quicken Loans Arena without the services of Gilbert Arenas, who will sit this game out to rest his body. This issue, according to Ed Tapscott, isn’t related to Arenas’ knee, but to just general sorness from not playing in so long.

First clue Gil wasn’t playing tonight was when he was joking around in the locker room. Then he came back with his laptop and started planning out his summer workouts and which moves he would work on developing and perfecting on certain days. When asked what happened to his original desire to play here in Cleveland where he has a “love-hate relationship” (in his words) with the Cavs fans, and what happened to his motivation for sticking it to the Cleveland faithful, Gil said, “Eh, I did it already, on national television. That was enough. First game back with all of us, them coming into the building with a 13-game streak, one of the worst teams in the league ends it and wins comfortably? Yeah, that was enough.”

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Arenas said he has one more game left this season, at home Monday against the Toronto Raptors.

Meanwhile, the Cavaliers will be hungry to smack up the Wizards after that loss at Verizon Center, and they’ll be eager to continue to defend home court where they have lost only once in 38 games at Quicken Loans Arena. Cleveland is getting all its pieces back as Anderson Varejao and Ben Wallace both return from injuries.

The Wizards will start Javaris Crittenton and Dominic McGuire at guard, Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler at forward and Brendan Haywood at center. Cleveland will start LeBron James, Varejao, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Delonte West and Mo Williams.

On another note … The Wizards tonight along with Wizards Care will be conducting a telethon to benefit the Capital Area Food Bank. The telethon, which will be hosted by Comcast SportsNet’s Chris Miller and Ron THompson and Wizards DJ Big Tigger will begin at 6:30 p.m. and will air on Comcast. The wives of Wizards players will be manning the phones, and the items up for auction include jerseys of Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison. The telethon will continue until the Wizards post game show on Comcast.